Professor Cooper, Dean Johnson comment on juvenile detention ruling

Professor Holly Cooper and Dean Kevin R. Johnson offered insights to national media after federal Judge Dolly Gee ruled last week that U.S. government officials must obtain parental consent or a court order before administering psychotropic drugs to detained migrant children.

Judge Gee also said she would appoint an independent monitor to keep tabs on the conditions in which migrant children are kept after they are detained along parts of the United States’ border with Mexico.

Gee was responding to a motion to enforce the Flores settlement agreement, the 1997 class-action settlement that sets standards for the detention and release of juvenile migrant detainees. Immigration Law Clinic Co-Director Cooper and Professor Carter White, of the Civil Rights Clinic, are counsel for the plaintiffs in the Flores settlement motion. UC Davis School of Law students Christian Hatchett, Gladys Pimentel Hernandez and Mayra Sandoval played key roles in filing the motion, having spent months interviewing detained migrant children.

Cooper told CNN the ruling was a “huge victory.” Cooper also commented for the Associated Press about a separate stipulation by Gee that officials must tell children in writing why they are in a secure facility. “The kids weren’t getting notice of why they were sent away,” Cooper said.

Johnson also weighed in on Judge Gee’s ruling, with an op-ed for The Conversation that laid out the history of the Flores settlement agreement.

Holly Cooper ’98, co-director of the Immigration Law Clinic, has extensive litigation experience defending the rights of immigrants and is a nationally recognized expert on immigration detention issues and on the immigration consequences of criminal convictions.

Kevin R. Johnson is dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law, and professor of Chicana/o studies. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law, and civil rights.